


Things Not Found in Gift Shops

by PaperKatla



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt, but they get what's coming to them, drunk men have grabby hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 23:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9407150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperKatla/pseuds/PaperKatla
Summary: A perfectly good night out is ruined by a drunk meta.Based on the prompt: '"Put your arm around me, I'll help you walk." Any combo of Barry/Cisco/Caitlin'.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pennflinn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennflinn/gifts).



> I've been really struggling to write something--anything!--for a while now, and am dealing with some other stuff. I begged Pennflinn for a fic, and it's taken me this long to provide. It's not my best, but it's a start, and I would welcome all comments.

* * *

 

> "Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops." Kurt Vonnegut

\---

Cisco takes an off-brand zolpidem to combat the insomnia. He vibes in his sleep most nights, and has horrific nightmares of Eobard Thawne vibrating his hand through his chest and pureeing his heart the rest of the time. It’s been years since Barry hit the rewind button on the universe and prevented Eobard from killing him, but Cisco can still remember the sharp pain of Eobard’s fingers slipping through his ribcage. There had been a brief moment--about three seconds--where he’d remained conscious. It was just long enough for him to register the agony, so he could remember it forever in his vibes and his nightmares.

This pain was nothing like that, but it was close.

They’d been at a party--just the four of them--like regular-ass 20-somethings. Cisco had heard that a local band was doing a living room show at a friend of a friend’s place, and they all agreed to go. They were all too aware how long it’d been since any of them felt young, impulsive. So, they got dressed up like the hipsters they weren’t, took shots in Barry’s new kitchen, and stumbled into an Uber together.

The living room was crowded, and smelled like sweat and flavored tobacco, but the band was loud and the audience excited and giving. The songs moved in and out from slow, dreamy electronic tunes, to funky, hip-hop-style ones, before the band switched out. The new group was younger with higher energy and less experience, but they gladly took requests from the audience. It was how Cisco found himself taking Caitlin by the hand and leading her into a spin as the new group played an energetic but clumsy version of “Tutti Frutti”.

It was nice--really nice--so, it sucked when some drunk, frat boy of a meta tried to grab Iris’s ass. “Hey, whoa, back off, pal!” He slurred a response, something resembling ‘aww, c’mon, baby’, before lurching forward again. Before Barry could step in, Iris reeled back her arm like a pitcher and punched the guy in the face. “Well, I warned you.” Iris replied, shrugging. The man lay on the ground, groaning.

“Give it up for One Punch Girl!” shouted some rando, hammered dude in a Naruto headband. A number of people cheered, the band took another request as everyone turned away from the guy.

That was probably their first mistake.

Later, Cisco wouldn’t be sure exactly how he heard the crunch, just that he did. The sharp snap of bones was almost unmistakable to him now after years on Team Flash. He found himself turning back in time to see the drunk guy shifting, his body twisting and expanding like the monster transformations in the shitty B-movies he liked to watch. The most horrifying things were his arms which snapped above the wrists to unsheathe sharp shards of bones, like some twisted version of Wolverine. Blood dripped onto the carpet as the drunk guy stumbled forward.

“Uh, Barry…”

Barry turned around as Cisco blindly reached back, smacking at Barry’s side to get his attention. “Wha--oh! Oh.”

“Think you’re better than me, bitch?”he slurred. Barry backed up, and Cisco and Caitlin stepped in the way, allowing him an easy exit as he flashed out of the room to retrieve his suit. The lead singer of the band stopped playing to shout into the shitty microphone set-up, “Hey, be cool. Be cool, guys!”

Nobody was cool. The fight was brief and messy. Caitlin ditched her power-suppressing cuffs to ice the floor, and Cisco shot a burst of vibrations, shoving the drunk meta back a few feet before he came barreling back towards him like a linebacker. He also hit him like linebacker. And stabbed him like a mugger...if a mugger was also Hugh Jackman.

Which brings him back to the pain.

If Cisco was being honest, being stabbed felt exactly like how he’d imagined, but somehow that hadn’t at all prepared him for actually experiencing the pain for himself. Caitlin abandons her fight with the drunk guy the moment the Flash rushes into the room, joining Iris in bending over him and applying pressure to the wound. He cries out, tunnel visioning as the Flash suddenly appears above him.

“Well, Mr. Grabby is taking a little nap over there,” he says, smiling. “How you doing, pal? Can you walk?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,’ Cisco tries to reply. It comes out more like. “Yuh. Muh-mrr.”

“C’mon, put your arm around me, I’ll help you walk,” Barry says, waving off a good Samaritan with a cell phone.

Anxious to get away from the crowd and over-eager to help, Barry throws Cisco’s arm over his shoulder.

Cisco passes out.

\---

He wakes up, hours later, in the darkness of STAR Lab’s medbay, hooked up to an IV, pumping new blood and pain medication into his body. He feels fuzzy and tired, but when Caitlin leans over him and smiles, he smiles back. “Hey, Dr. Snow,” he teases. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” His mouth tastes scummy, and he remembers he’d been drinking when Hairy Frog Wolverine Man shanked him in the shoulder with his terrifying bone shard hands. Caitlin frowns at him, fidgeting with the thin blanket. “Hey…” he says softly. “Hey.”

“Being superheroes really sucks sometimes, y’know,” she says. “I don’t like having to sew up my friends.”

He nods. Neither of them had entered their respective fields believing that they would be responsible for the lives of their neighbors, the outcome of futures they shouldn’t even know about, the deaths that they’d seen. Cisco had imagined that he’d build a life in an apartment, tinkering away with new inventions after work, standing beside one of the leading scientists of their time. Caitlin had probably imagined continue her work as a biologist, get married have a few kids. They’d had plans for their lives that they’d been constructing. Now, though, they were scrambling to rebuild, to arrange new lives for themselves. Cisco's not sure how well it was all going.

Awkwardly, he flops his hand over Caitlin's and squeezes. “I’ll make it up to you.”

She smiles. “You better.”


End file.
